It’s the season for consumption and gift buying, but no one seems to want to buy shares of China’s top banks and e-commerce firm LightInTheBox (NYSE: LITB), which have both just announced new share buy-backs. In the case of the big Chinese banks, the buyer is their state-run controlling stakeholder, Central Huijin, which has conducted a modest Chinese-style share repurchase. In LightInTheBox’s case the buyer is the company itself, which has also launched a its own modest share repurchase program. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on December 17. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════
Renault (Paris: RENA) Signs $1.3 Bln JV Deal with Dongfeng (HKEx: 489) (English article)
After 2 weeks of silence following the long-awaited issue of 4G mobile licenses, China Unicom (HKEx: 762; NYSE: CHU) is finally making some hints about its strategy in the new era of high-speed telecommunications. I’m usually quite negative about the company due to its disorganization and lack of focus, but for once I have to compliment it for a strategy that looks reasonably well conceived. Meantime in other 4G news, the final countdown to China Mobile’s (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) iPhone launch may finally be nearing an end, with speculation that announcement of the long-overdue tie-up could come as soon as Wednesday. Read Full Post…
A week after declaring it was abandoning the US networking equipment market for now, Huawei is adding that it remains committed to the less controversial American smartphone market. At the same time, one of China’s biggest high-tech exporters is admitting it faces a long and difficult road in the highly competitive US smartphone market where global leaders Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Samsung (Seoul: 005930) dominate. This admission and newer low-profile approach look like a smart moves to me, since the chances of Huawei capturing more than 10 percent of the US smartphone market in the next 5 years are practically zero.
It seems appropriate that I’m writing this post on my computer while sitting in a coffee shop at a Wanda Plaza shopping center in Shanghai, since new reports say the Wanda real estate group owned by one of China’s richest men is planning a big new move into the booming e-commerce sector. Wanda Group Chairman Wang Jianlin will certainly have plenty of competition if he makes such a move, including from an increasingly aggressive Walmart (NYSE: WMT), whose China-based Yihaodian site is reportedly getting set to move into a ground-breaking new free-trade zone (FTZ) in Shanghai. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on December 14-16. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════
Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) Launches China Website, Sets Deposits At 250,000 Yuan (Chinese article)
EU To Probe Chinese Nuclear Power Investments In Britain – Report (Chinese article)
China Unicom (HKEx: 762) To Focus On FDD-LTE Network (English article)
I’ll end the week with a lighter look at an emerging trend in the China corporate world, which has seen some of the nation’s biggest tech personalities make high-profile bets with their equally successful peers from more traditional sectors. The latest in these high-tech wagers has seen Lei Jun, the charismatic founder of fast-growing smartphone maker Xiaomi, make a bet with Dong Mingzhu, often considered China’s most successful business woman as the chairman of appliance giant Gree (Shenzhen: 000651). These bets are mostly for entertainment and publicity on the one hand; but they do also represent the very real challenge that traditional industries are feeling from e-commerce and other emerging high-tech business models. Read Full Post…
After gobbling up billions of dollars worth of debt from Chinese Internet companies over the last year, investors may finally be starting to get full on the bond feast with word that online real estate services firm E-House (NYSE: EJ) has sharply trimmed its plan for a new major offering. One can interpret this unexpected twist in a number of ways, which I’ll explain shortly. But from my perspective the development looks like one of the first signs that a resurgence of interest in US-listed Chinese tech firms over the last few months could quickly dim in the first half of 2014 as investors turn their attention to other companies. Read Full Post…
The year 2013 will go down as a major turning point for China’s solar panel makers, with some names emerging as new sector leaders after a prolonged downturn while others quietly disappeared. The latter category saw former leader Suntech (OTC: STPFQ) go bankrupt and LDK (NYSE: LDK) quietly sell off many of its assets, while the former category has seen Canadian Solar (Nasdaq: CSIQ) and Shunfeng (HKEx: 1165) emerge as names to watch in the future. Canadian Solar in particular has been coming back strong in the second half of this year with a steady stream of good news, including its latest mega-deal to sell panels in China. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on December 13. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════
Newly listed car website Autohome (NYSE: ATHM) got an early Christmas present, as its shares soared in their trading debut in what’s likely to be the final IPO by a Chinese firm on Wall Street this year. Meantime in other IPO news, online literature company Shanda Cloudary could be moving closer to its long-delayed listing with talk that its longtime CEO has resigned. These 2 news bits cap a bumpy year for Chinese IPOs in New York, where new offerings were nearly non-existent for most of 2013 before a sudden flurry of activity in the last 2 months. Read Full Post…
